WASHINGTON — The budget agreement Congress reached Wednesday cheered investors and removed the threat of a debt default that could have triggered another recession.

Yet the temporary nature of the deal means a cloud will remain over a sluggish U.S. economy that was further slowed by the government’s partial shutdown.

Political fights over taxing and spending will persist over the next few months. The risk of another government shutdown and doubts about the government’s borrowing authority remain. Businesses and consumers may still spend and invest at the same cautious pace they have since the Great Recession officially ended more than four years ago.

The agreement reopens the government until Jan. 15. The deal enables the United States to keep borrowing to pay its bills, but not past Feb. 7.

The deal followed a two-week shutdown and came a day before a Treasury Department deadline to raise the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt limit.

“The good news is that we avoid hitting the debt ceiling and all the risks that entails,” said Joel Prakken, co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm. “The bad news is … this hasn’t produced any clarity. “

Economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch have cut their forecast for growth in the October-December quarter to an annual growth rate of 2 percent from an earlier estimate of 2.5 percent.

“The U.S. economy dodged a bullet today,” said Paul Edelstein, an economist at IHS Global Insight. “But the reprieve will be short. … The stage is set for another showdown in January.”

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